Just William quotes

William walked slowly down the road, gazing thoughtfully at the coin. After deep calculations, based on the fact that a shilling is the equivalent of two sixpences, he came to the conclusion that both luxuries could be indulged in.

In the matter of sweets, William frankly upheld the superiority of quantity over quality.

Moreover, he knew every sweet shop within a two miles radius of his home whose proprietor added an extra sweet after the scale had descended, and he patronised these shops exclusively.

“Be quiet!” roared William’s father.

Like the rest of the family, he dreaded William’s eloquence.

“What’s that on your tongue! Put your tongue out.”

William obeyed.

The colour of William’s tongue would have put to shame Spring’s freshest tints.

“How many times am I to tell you,” bellowed William’s father, “that I won’t have you going about eating filthy poisons all day between meals?”

“Peace?” he said. Robert turned his haggard countenance upon her as though his ears must have deceived him.

“Peace! I’ll wait. I’ll wait till he’s all right and going about; I won’t start till then. But⁠—peace! It’s not peace, it’s an armistice⁠—that’s all.”

“Bust off,” corrected the butler. “I said so soon as I saw you. I said you’d ’ave eat your buttons bust off in a week. Well, you’ve eat ’em bust off in ten minutes.”

“Eatin’ an’ destroyin’ of ’is clothes,” he said gloomily, returning to the kitchen. “It’s all boys ever do⁠—eatin’ an’ destroyin’ of their clothes.”

He went out with the soup and William was left with the boots. He was getting tired of boots. He’d covered them all thickly with blacking, and he didn’t know what to do next. Then suddenly he remembered his balloon in his pocket upstairs.

Miss Drew, entering her classroom, was aghast to see instead of the usual small array of buttonholes on her desk, a mass of already withering hothouse flowers completely covering her desk and chair.

William was a boy who never did things by halves.

“Good Heavens!” she cried in consternation.

“I’m not goin’ to take much bother over ’em now,” said William. “Miss Drew, she can’t talk straight. She dunno what she means.”

“That’s always the trouble with women,” agreed his father.

“William says his idol has feet of clay,” he said to his wife, who had approached.

The glance that William’s father fixed upon her would have made a stronger woman quail, but

Aunt Emily was scraping out the last remnants of jam and did not notice.

“I’m a bit overtired today, I think,” she went on. “I’m so apt to forget how weak I am and then I overdo it. I’m ready for the cake, William.

She had slipped off her dress skirt so as not to crush it, and she lay in her immense stature in a blouse and striped petticoat, while from her open mouth issued the fascinating sounds.

In sleep Aunt Emily was not beautiful.

William thoughtfully propped up a cushion in the doorway and stood considering the situation.

“And me in my state of health,” she said as she followed him. From the cab she gave her parting shot.

“And if this horrible thing hadn’t happened, I might have stayed with you all the winter and perhaps part of the spring.”

William’s father wiped his brow with his handkerchief as the cab drove off.

William leant out of the window.

“I’m goin’ to bed,” he said, “ ’cause my father don’t understand ’bout English Grammar, that’s why!”

William turned slowly to go from the room.

“I shouldn’t think,” he said bitterly, as he went, “I shouldn’t think there’s many houses where so much washin’ and brushin’ goes on as in this, an’ I’m glad for their sakes.”

She heard him coming downstairs ten minutes later.

“I have so enjoyed seeing you. I hope you’ll come again,” untruthfully stammered Mrs. Brown, moving so as to block out the sight of William’s face, but Mrs. de Vere Carter was not to be checked.

There are people to whom the expression on a child’s face conveys absolutely nothing.

Once more she floated towards William.

He turned back and looked at her.

“It’s a wonder I’m not dead,” he said bitterly, “the things I have to do!”

He walked slowly—a dejected, dismal figure. At the gate he stopped and glanced cautiously up and down the road. There were three more figures coming down the road, with short intervals between them. They were Henry, Douglas and Ginger.

William had insisted on a place on the attacking side.

“I couldn’t put any feelin’,” he explained, “into fightin’ for that baby.”

When they finally decided to set off homewards, William gazed hopelessly at his charge. Its appearance defies description. For many years afterwards William associated babies in his mind with paraffin-oil and potato.

When they finally decided to set off homewards, William gazed hopelessly at his charge. Its appearance defies description.

For many years afterwards William associated babies in his mind with paraffin-oil and potato.

“Just help me get the potato out of its hair,” he pleaded; “never mind the oil and the rest of it.”

“There you are!” she called. “I was getting quite anxious. Thank you so much, dear.”

But that is what she said before she saw the baby!

Mrs. Brown approached William on the subject of his prospective role of page with a certain apprehension.

The normal attitude of William’s family towards William was one of apprehension.

“Would you like to go to Cousin Sybil’s wedding?” she said.

Then he sat down on the Chesterfield and began the oranges. They were very yellow and juicy and rather overripe. He crammed them into his mouth with both little fat hands at once.

He was well aware, even at his tender years, that life’s sweetest joys come soonest to an end.

Orange juice mingled with wool fluff and butter on his small round face. It trickled down his cheeks and fell on to his white lace collar. His mouth and the region round it were completely yellow.

“Now, you go away! I don’t want you here. See? You go away you little—assified cow!”

William’s invective was often wholly original.

The small boy made off, still staring and clutching his spoils. William started to the door and yelled to the retreating figure, “if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

“No, they came round to see me in the night—the makers did. You cou’n’t of heard them,” he added hastily. “It was when you was asleep. If you’ll ’scuse me contradictin’ of you.”

It is a great gift to be able to lie so as to convince other people. It is a still greater gift to be able to lie so as to convince oneself. William was possessed of the latter gift.

“I shall certainly not pay more than twopence,” said his customer severely, taking a bar of chocolate and laying down twopence on the counter. “And I shall report this shop to the Profiteering Committee. It’s scandalous. And a pack of wicked lies!”

But it was not “quite all right” with William.

Reader, if you had been left, at the age of eleven, in sole charge of a sweet shop for a whole morning, would it have been “all right” with you? I trow not.

But we will not follow William through the humiliating hours of the afternoon. We will leave him as, pale and unsteady, but as yet master of the situation, he wends his homeward way.

“I told you not to keep them in the house.”

Mr. Brown in large pyjamas looked fiercely down at William in small pyjamas with the cause of all the tumult clasped lovingly to his breast.

Ethel, in bed, continued to gasp weakly in the intervals of drinking tea.

He sat by the sofa and talked in low tones. He read aloud to her. He was sympathetic, penitent, humble and devoted. In spite of all his efforts, however, he felt that his old prestige was gone.

He was no longer the Man Who Carried William Home. He was the Man Who Gave William the Rat.

He felt that, in the eyes of the Brown household, he was solely responsible for Ethel’s collapse. There was reproach even in the eyes of the housemaid who showed him out. In the drive he met William.

Sadly William reviewed the downfall of his hopes. Gone was Mr. French and all he stood for. Gone was Rufus. Gone was Cromwell. He put his hand into his pocket and it came in contact with the two-shilling piece.

“Well,” he said slowly and philosophically, “I’ve got that left anyway.”

Fate was against him in every way. With a deep sigh he went out of the garden gate and strolled down the road disconsolately, hands in pockets.

Life stretched empty and uninviting before him without his bow and arrow.

And Ginger would have his bow and arrow, Henry would have his bow and arrow, Douglas would have his bow and arrow. He, William, alone would be a thing apart, a social outcast, a boy without a bow and arrow;

“Go and wash your hands, dear,” said Mrs. Brown patiently.

For eleven years she had filled the trying position of William’s mother. It had taught her patience.

“They’re not dirty,” he said in a tone of righteous indignation. “Well, anyway, they’ve been dirtier other times and you’ve said nothin’. I can’t be always washin’ them, can I?

William heard no more.

There were moments when he actively disliked Ethel.

He returned a few minutes later, shining with cleanliness, his hair brushed back fiercely off his face.

“I’ll take him, honest, Robert.”

Robert hesitated and was lost.

“Well,” he said, “you just mind you do, that’s all, or I’ll jolly well hear about it. I’ll see you do too.”